


He Catches Tigers in Red Weather

by ADeedWithoutaName



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU!Sam, Alternate Universe, Gen, Wincest if you really squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:54:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25267939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ADeedWithoutaName/pseuds/ADeedWithoutaName
Summary: The definition of Hell: the person you became meets the person you could have become.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 50





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock" by Wallace Stevens.

The first thing Sam heard when he started waking up was familiar voices, ones he couldn't quite place. They were shushing each other, and that alone was enough to spark anxiety. But he was too bleary, head spinning and body heavy, to really take it in yet.

One of his hands drifted to his scalp as he blinked his eyes stickily open. His vision was blurry, everything soft and out of focus, but he could still tell he wasn't in his room. Frowning to himself, he tried to calm down, sure there was a reasonable explanation. A tongue of panic crept in anyway, rising off the anxiety.

He felt...weird. Out of it, loose and only partially tethered inside his body, which was aching like the bastard lovechild of the flu and a bruise. Honestly, it reminded him of coming off a bender, but it'd been a few years since he'd drunk enough to be anywhere near this hungover.

Maybe he was aching because of the lumpy, unforgiving bed under his back. He could feel springs digging into his spine and hips, and with the way he was splayed out, his hands and feet hung off the edges of a mattress that was not made to accommodate somebody over six feet tall. It really hammered home that he wasn't in his room. Felt like the beds in the motels they'd used to crash in, back when he was a teenager...and now the panic was an icy rope, knotted around his guts and kidneys.

He pushed himself up onto his elbows, had to swallow a gag reflex as everything seesawed crazily. When it settled, his stomach fell right out of him.

The first thing he saw was...Dean, sitting in a chair at the end of the bed. It smacked Sam sideways with a splintered kaleidoscope of emotion: guilt, anger, fear, happiness, relief. He was older than he remembered, but that kind of made sense, didn't it? Considering how long it'd been. And they were in a cheap, crappy motel room yanked straight out of their childhood, all peeling paint and water-stained walls. He would've demanded to know what he was doing here, anger winning out over everything else, but then the words froze right to his tongue, because he'd just caught sight of himself.

Sam couldn't believe it was a mirror for even a second. This version, sitting right next to Dean, was scruffier, had much longer hair, was wearing a flannel with the sleeves rolled up its forearms. Still, it was unmistakably him.

Reflexively, Sam scooted up the bed, kicking to try and get purchase on the ratty duvet. His hand dove under the nearest pillow, but he'd put the knife in his nightstand a month ago, his guns were in a safe in the closet, and it didn't matter anyway because this wasn't even his fucking home. Just a motel room so crappy and rundown he half-thought he might have stayed in this exact one when he was fifteen.

"What the hell's going on?" he finally managed, voice sleep-rough and breathless as his heart hammered in his throat.

"Well, we were kinda hoping you could tell us that," the other Sam said quietly.

"What's your name?" asked Dean, or whatever looked like him, blunt.

"Sam," Sam said warily, not believing they didn't already know. "Winchester."

"Middle name?"

"I...William."

"You sure about that?"

"Dean." Sam watched the other him touch Dean's shoulder. Dean sat back in his chair.

They were sitting pretty close together, Sam couldn't help noticing.

"What's your last memory?" asked the other him.

"Uh…" Sam groped. It was foggy, but it came back to him fast, so mundane he almost skipped right over it at first. "It was a Saturday - "

"Still is," Dean interrupted. Sam felt his jaw tighten.

" - and I'd just ordered DoorDash. For dinner."

"What'd you order?"

"Vegetarian sushi platter." Sam didn't bother keeping the irritation out of his voice.

"Well, he's definitely you," Dean commented, turning to look at the other Sam.

As the other one glared meaningfully, Sam looked around the room, trying to figure out what he might be able to use as a weapon if it came down to that. Which he was starting to think it would. Despite all the problems he'd had, he hadn't exactly been sticking to a concrete training regimen lately, and he was really hating himself for that now. He didn't even know what he was up against. What the hell kind of creature would kidnap him looking like hard-living versions of himself and his brother?

They hadn't tied him up. He wasn't sure if that was a good thing, or if it just meant they weren't worried about being able to stop him from escaping.

The two of them were muttering to each other now. "Probably ain't a clone. Something else?"

"We tested him while he was out. Salt, iron, silver, holy water, the works."

"So we thinking alternate universe, then?"

"Wait - wait, wait, wait." Sam put a hand out. He couldn't help it, he had to jump in. "Alternate universe? I'm sorry, but what the hell are you talking about? Who _are_ you?"

They looked at each other. Then the other him took a deep breath and leaned forward, forearms on his thighs, fingertips pressed together. Sam recognized the pose, used it with clients. Something crept unpleasantly down his spine.

"Sam," the other him began carefully. "Where you're from. A-are there monsters? Real monsters." When Sam didn't reply, he elaborated. "We're talking ghosts, werewolves…"

"Witches," Dean tacked on, obvious disgust in his voice.

It took a second, but Sam finally managed a laugh. It came out bitter.

"Yeah, you could say that. I spent my entire childhood, up 'til I was about eighteen, being dragged through places like this - " He gestured to the room around them. Could definitely use the lamp to bludgeon, maybe the phone if it wasn't glued down. " - learning how to kill them." His mouth twisted into something that almost felt like a smile. "Some kids do karate."

"Well." The other Sam cleared his throat. "That's a parallel, at least."

"Okay, just…" Sam shook his head in disgust and frustration. "You're seriously gonna try and tell me you're. What? Me, from another universe?"

"Oh, no. See, this is our universe." Dean pointed at the ground. " _You're_ from a different one."

"Yeah. Okay. Okay. Fine." Sam raked a hand back through his hair. "Say you're telling the truth. How'd I get here?"

The other him answered. "We're still trying to piece that together." _Convenient._ "But long story short, we were hunting a witch, and things got a little outta hand - "

"Sammy kicked her cauldron over," Dean stated. Sam's stomach twitched inside him at the nickname.

"I stopped her spell before she could finish it!" insisted the other him.

"Yeah, well." Dean gestured to Sam. "Maybe you didn't."

" _Anyway,_ we found you while we were cleaning up," Sam's doppelganger told him. "Out cold, on the floor, in the middle of her spell circle."

"And you immediately jumped to 'alternate universe,'" Sam said flatly.

"This isn't the first time we've dealt with something like this."

"Oh. Wow." Sam smiled at them, tight and sardonic. "You two must really get around, huh?"

There was a long, tense silence, just the three of them staring at each other, adrenaline that Sam had failed to use going rancid in his bloodstream. Dean broke it when he straightened his legs and looked at the other him, saying, "He doesn't believe us."

"I don't think I would either, at this point."

"Yeah, you're not me." Sam pointed at his double, and then at Dean. "And you're probably not my brother. I've got no way of knowing that you two are who and what you say you are, and it seems way more likely to me that you're some kind of monster. Some kind o-of...shapeshifter."

"Seems like a pretty convoluted scheme just to eat your brains," Dean pointed out.

"I've seen more convoluted." Sam's left hand, a fist in his lap, felt suddenly hot. "Believe me."

He'd thought he kept the feeling, the memories he couldn't quite stop from rising briefly to the surface, from reaching his face. But he caught an unreadable flicker in the other him's eyes that made him wonder if something hadn't made it through.

"Guess you get around, too." Dean, one hand on his knee and his elbow up, paused for a second. Then, abruptly, he said, "Until you were twenty-one, you thought pegging was just another word for cribbage because." He mimed fiddling with a cribbage board. "Pegs."

Even as he flushed, Sam snapped, "I never told Dean that!"

"Maybe not, but my Sam told me. He was drunk." He glanced at "his" Sam, who was also blushing. "Oh, man up, you wouldn't believe what I had to tell my nutty apocalypse self to get him to believe me."

Sam let out a long breath, tried to keep the tremble steady, failed. Who would have known that? Nobody. No...one person. Jess. But she wouldn't have told anybody. And he never would've told Dean himself because first of all, when? They hadn't done anything but talked shop and argued in fifteen years. And second of all, even drunk, he would've known Dean would hold it over his head until his life was a living hell.

They were telepaths. It was the only logical explanation. They were about to pick up on the fact he'd figured it out, and then they'd drop the act. Unless they wanted him to believe they weren't telepaths because they were playing the long game and wanted his guard to go down before they...did whatever it was they wanted to do with him. To him.

He overthought everything. If he'd still had one, his therapist probably would have been disappointed in him.

"Your turn." Dean nudged the other Sam, who'd been studying him while he was trying to unravel the situation. "C'mon, darkest secrets. Dig deep, man."

"It doesn't matter." The other him shook his head. A foot of hair swayed. "He's not going to believe us no matter what we tell him."

Fresh adrenaline. A nauseous, icy pinch in the middle of Sam's back.

"How d'you figure?" Dean asked.

"'Cause I wouldn't. Not 'til I'd decided on my own."

"You're _not_ me," Sam repeated slowly through gritted teeth before he could stop himself. It didn't matter, there was no way to play this smart.

"I am. Kinda." It was calm and reasonable, the way the fake him said it. Like he was just stating a fact, one that would be true whether Sam believed it or not. "But I'm not gonna waste any more time trying to convince you. It'd be a lot more useful to put that energy into trying to figure out why you're here and how to get you home. Do you wanna help us do that?"

Sam looked away, gnawing on the inside of one cheek, stomach and chest just one big knot behind his ribs. He didn't understand, knew he was vulnerable, was teetering on his back foot here, and nothing frustrated him more. Because the whole point of so much of what he'd done over the years was to never feel like this again.

"I can try," he finally said, "but I can't imagine I'll be a ton of help. I'm pretty out of the loop when it comes to witch lore. Obviously. Because, I mean, since when do they pull people into other dimensions?" They didn't. He knew that. They just didn't have enough juice, nothing did, and alternate universes were theoretical physics crap anyway, not magic. "Is that a normal thing here or something."

"Not usually, no," fake him admitted.

"We think this one was packing more than the average nine-volt batteries though, if you know what I mean," Dean spoke up.

Sam opened his mouth. He wasn't even sure what he was going to say, but he was filled with a desperate, scrabbling need to ask a question. Any question. Anything to patch the unstable little raft of knowledge he was floating on here. But before he could say a word, a cell phone chimed, and the other Sam pulled it out of his pocket.

He really needed something else to call him. "Sham" came instantly to mind.

"That Rowena?" Dean asked. Sam decided he didn't need a different name for him.

"Nope. Cas."

"You think he might be able to help with this?" Dean asked after a short pause.

"Maybe, if it were, I don't know, ten years ago and there were a dozen more of him. I'll ask him anyway; worst-case scenario, he helps us with research." Sham stood and took a few steps away. "I'll keep trying to get a hold of Rowena, too."

Sam saw an opportunity and grabbed it, questions bursting out of him the way they hadn't in years.

"Who...who's Rowena? Who's Cas?" he demanded. "A-and just how in the hell d'you think you're gonna get me home, exactly? Could you…" He spread his hands. "Ask the witch who did this, or is she dead?"

It was mostly just him trying to poke holes in a story he still didn't believe. Partly trying to scrape up a little bit more truth. Sham and Dean looked at each other for about the dozenth time. _Telepaths._ Once again, Dean spoke first.

"Welp - " He clapped his hands onto his knees and pushed himself up with a grunt. "I'm hungry. Pizza and beer good with you?" He turned to Sham, who looked like he wanted to say something, but Dean glanced at Sam before he could. "You eat pizza, or only if it's all...free-range and gluten-free or whatever?"

"Pizza's fine," Sam replied quietly, even though he didn't feel like he could eat anything even if he tried right now.

Dean turned to go. Sham protested: "Hey, wait - "

"Hang tight. I'll be back before you know it." He jerked his chin at Sam. "He's scrawny. You can handle him."

The door shut, and Sham was left alone, staring at Sam. Sam stared back. They had the same face, same moles and long nose and jutting cheekbones, but Sham's jaw was unshaven. Not quite scruffy enough to be called a beard without another day or so of growth. Waves of hair curled past his ears, the kind of length he'd fantasized about in high school and college. Sham was a lot wider in the chest and shoulders, but their narrow hips were identical. Top-heavy, then. Didn't corner as well, might not be as fast. If it came down to an actual fight, though...Sam didn't like his odds.

"You a runner?" Sham asked. Sam could only blink for a second, the question catching him completely off-guard. Again.

"Uh, yeah. Yeah." He climbed off the bed. Sham didn't make a move to stop him, and Sam felt instantly better once his Nikes were planted on the stained carpet tiles. Much to his relief, he wasn't shaky or dizzy. Apparently, being thrown between worlds (or whatever had happened) didn't give you a concussion.

"I am, too," Sham told him.

"Weights too, looks like."

Sham shrugged. "I need the upper body strength."

"Right. For...hunting."

"Uh huh."

"You're a hunter."

There was a beat of silence. Sham stepped forward, paused when Sam matched the movement with a step back against the bed. Sam couldn't tell if he was upset by that or not. Sham grabbed the chairs he and Dean had been sitting in, one in each hand, and moved them over to the room's cheap little laminate table. Taking a seat in one, he commented, "And you're not."

"No." Warily, Sam crossed to the empty chair. He didn't sink into it until Sham tipped his head to it, and then only slowly, and because he couldn't think of a reason not to.

Sham folded his hands on the greasy plastic, leaned on his arms. When he made eye contact, a pulse of discomfort stirred Sam's stomach. Those were _his_ eyes staring back at him, gray-green with the familiar amber starburst around the pupils. But at the same time, they were different, in a way other than the thin scar through the tail end of one brow, and Sham was talking again before he could figure out how.

"So, you go to college?"

"Uh huh. Stanford for my undergrad. "

"What'd you major in?"

"Criminal Psych."

Sham smiled. "Me, too."

And that threw Sam off again. He wouldn't have expected Sham to have gone to college, if he was some hunter version of him. If Dad had somehow gotten his hooks deeper in him than he had Sam.

That was when he realized he was starting to believe it: that he was actually under the thumb of alternate-universe incarnations of himself and his brother. Because he'd had time to look at it from the most logical angles now, think it through, and much as he hated to admit it, Dean was right. It was just all too convoluted to meet any goal he could come up with. It didn't make sense for them to be lying at this point...or from the beginning, actually.

"Did you go to law school?" he asked. He didn't realize how tensely he'd been waiting for the answer until Sham shook his head and he felt himself relax.

"No, but…" Sham sat back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. "I'm guessing you did."

"Yeah. I got my JD ten years ago."

"What're you practicing, then?"

"Uh, criminal defense."

"So you went with that after all." Sham awkwardly added, "That's...what I wanted to do."

Sam laughed. "I thought about specializing in something else, but everything else felt wrong."

"Public defender?"

"Might as well be. My firm funnels all the pro bono cases right to me."

Sham nodded silently for a couple seconds. "Not on the partner track then, I'm guessing."

"I-I don't...mind." Sham didn't say anything else, so Sam asked, "You were aiming for law too, right? What was it for you?"

Sham took a deep breath. "When I was eighteen, I told everybody it was 'cause I wanted to help people. I thought I knew it was actually 'cause it was, y'know, a challenge. A way to prove I was smart. And it would let me make enough money I'd never have to think about the way I grew up, anything about it, ever again."

Sam swallowed.

"But in the past few years, I realized I actually was telling the truth. Back then." He cocked his head. "How about you?"

"It kinda sounds like virtue signaling when you say it out loud."

Sham smiled down at the table. Without thinking, Sam brought his hands up, pressing sweaty palms to the cool surface. Sham's eyes immediately zeroed in on the silicone band on his left ring finger.

Sam saw surprise, then guilt, then something almost like understanding before Sham asked, "Oh, you. You're married?"

When Sam forced a smile, there might as well have been a ten-pound concrete weight hanging from each corner of his mouth.

"Yep. Almost a decade." He lifted his hand.

He watched Sham roll that around in his head, nodding again. He looked like he was thinking of something else to ask, but wasn't sure he actually wanted to know the answer. Sam knew the feeling.

Now they were back to the silence. Practically itching under his skin, Sam examined Sham again. This time, he saw the scars, some he had himself and some he definitely didn't. All over his hands, between his crushed knuckles and the calluses on his palms. Up his arms, defensive wounds gone silvery and flat, with plenty of fresher pink ones to even out the mix. They were subtle, barely visible, especially the ones on his face. The eyebrow one he'd already noticed, the triple tally mark of a claw score on one cheek, the little divot of a puncture wound dangerously close to the vermilion border of his mouth. Sam's shared marks flared and throbbed on his skin, like he was reliving every wound that had given him one.

The pain forced a question he hadn't intended to ask out of him. Before Sham could ask more questions about the ring.

"Why...how are you a hunter?"

Sham smiled again. Just a little this time, an ambiguous Mona Lisa twitch of the lips. It could've been bitter, could have been accepting, could have been nothing more than a reflex. But Sam could have sworn there was pain in it.

"Things change. And stuff happens. Stuff you never even expected, and - _you_ change, because of it."

"Yeah," Sam agreed, "but that's why I left. And never went back."

Sham shrugged. "Obviously, things went a little bit differently for the two of us."

"Obviously," Sam agreed. After a second, he found himself shaking his head. "I guess you just must be made of sterner stuff than I am, because I can't imagine ever being dragged kicking and screaming back into it. All the - the nightmares, and the guilt, and the - " Once again, he indicated the motel room. "All the _this._ Scraping by, hand to mouth, doing something you don't want and never signed up for? For zero thanks or recognition, and wonder if you...haven't made things worse. While you're rolling out of town."

They stared at each other again. Neither of them said anything. It had to have been close to a minute before Sham cleared his throat and started, "Your wi - "

"Look, shouldn't we be doing research or something?" Sam interrupted.

"Oh. Yeah." Sham looked a little startled. "Of course."

Sam felt guilty, even though he didn't want to. "I'm sorry, I just…"

"No, I get it, it's fine." Sham leaned out of his chair to snag a backpack, dragging it over so that he could pull out a laptop. "You wanna get home."

Sam blew out a long breath. "Yeah. I really do."

Sham was only about five minutes into a downright heroic attempt to figure out where Sam's witch knowledge left off and his started when Dean got back, flat boxes in one hand and a couple six packs dangling from the other. After kicking the door shut behind him, he lifted both in the air and announced, "I got chow!" He hadn't even gotten everything on the table before he looked at Sam and asked, "Oh, wait, sorry. You drink beer?"

"Yup," Sam assured him, smiling tightly. "I do. Thanks."

He found himself looking at Sham, who just smirked back at him. "You'll get used to it."

Sam felt his smile get tighter. "Great."

They ate. Dean had somehow deigned to get a vegetable pizza, spinach and olives and sundried tomatoes; maybe they'd been out of all the other kinds. Sam didn't look at either him or Sham, head down, not tasting what was in his mouth. He wasn't worried about poison. They'd had plenty of opportunity to kill him or knock him out again if they wanted to.

"So you two figure anything out?" Dean asked through a full mouth. Sam felt something somewhere on his face twitch.

"In the - " He checked his Fitbit. " - half hour you were gone? This is a cross-reality problem we're talking about here. Magic so advanced, I-I didn't even know it existed before now."

Dean raised his hands, swallowed. "All I'm saying is, Sammy's some kinda galaxy-brain genius. Got a full ride to Stanford - "

"So did he, Dean," Sham cut in. Sam was still stumbling over the fact Dean's tone could have almost been mistaken for proud.

"Yeah. I figured he had the same kinda thing going on." Dean shrugged. "Thought putting the two of you together in a room together would, I don't know, rev things up."

"Guess not." Sam shrugged jerkily.

"He's right." Sham spoke up. "We've never really handled something like this before. Not without somebody else's mojo backing us up. It's gonna be a major fix, and he's rusty." He glanced at Sam. "Kind of a lot to catch him up on."

"So what's the plan?" Dean asked. "Besides Witch 101."

"First of all, we probably oughta take care of Adelina and all her shit."

"Is that the witch?" Sam almost demanded. Much as he hated to think about it, she might be a decent shot at him getting home. If everything else failed, obviously. "Like, _the_ witch. So she is still alive."

"Oh, no, she's dead," Dean reassured him. "We just gotta torch the body and all her gross, witchy crap." A pause. "Might need a couple hazmat suits."

"Don't burn any of her books, I want those," Sham said hastily. "At least a few are probably cursed, but they've gotta be useful."

"Good thinking."

"Wait, are you saying you just...left a dead body?" Sam broke into the conversation. "At the scene of the crime? Surrounded by evidence?"

"Well, it's. A house outside of town," Sham pointed out, awkwardly. "A ways outside of town, actually."

"Yeah, the owners just 'gave' it to her." Dean made air quotes. "And we locked up when we left. Made sure she didn't have any resurrection spells or booby traps around, too. She's fine."

Sam couldn't say anything. He didn't remember everything about their father's lessons, mostly through conscious effort, but he knew that that definitely wasn't how he'd taught them to hunt. Sham and Dean looked at him for a second, and then Dean pointed at him.

"You see that? Vintage bitch face," he declared. "Haven't seen that one from you since you were about twenty-three."

"What?" Stung, Sam shook his head as Sham's face settled into an unimpressed expression. "What's a...what's a 'bitch face?'"

Instead of answering, Sham closed the screen of his laptop and pushed himself to his feet. "We oughta get going."

Apparently, Dean agreed. They both headed for the door without answering his question. Resting a hand on the doorknob, Dean glanced back to see Sam hadn't moved, and jerked his chin at him.

"C'mon. Field trip."

Reluctantly, Sam rose, followed the two of them outside. He somehow felt even more exposed than he had back in the room, to both them and everything else. Some buried evolutionary instinct, hopelessly out of its depth, cynically expected either weapon or mouth to bite into his back any second. It faded a little when he saw the car. Not because of a sense of safety.

"Oh," he said. "You've...still got that thing, huh?"

Dean turned his head to glare at him so fast Sam could have sworn he heard his neck crack. "She's got a name."

"Uh, the Impala?"

Apparently, that wasn't the right answer. Dean stomped over to the driver's side, slinging himself into the car. Before he joined him, Sham leaned over, murmured, "He calls it Baby."

Sam rolled his eyes, didn't care if Dean saw him. "Course he does."

He slid into the backseat, and he could say one thing about the car: Dean had taken care of it. Because it was exactly the same as he remembered. Same reeking leather, same ammo-boxes-and-beer-cans trash deposit on the floor, same sickening angle to his legs where he had to bend them up in order to fit. Exactly like being eighteen again.

He looked out the window as they drove. It was dark out, witching hour adjacent, and he tried to tell himself that there'd be a notebook where they were going with step-by-step instructions on how to return him to his own world. He knew there wouldn't be, though. Nothing was ever that easy.

"What was your last witch hunt?" Sham asked him, twisting to peer into the back. Sam tore his eyes away from a reelection campaign billboard for somebody named Jefferson Rooney, who had apparently been the president for the last four years, and sifted through memories he'd kept cleanly buried.

"Ahh...I don't know. Grand Rapids? Yeah. Back in 2000."

"Oh, right. I remember that." Sham looked at Dean. "Lizard lady."

Dean mumbled something Sam couldn't make out over the obnoxious grind of the engine, apparently still sulking. Sham turned back to him.

"This one was...a little different than any witch you've probably dealt with before."

Sam had kind of figured that one out already. What with the dimension-hopping and all. But he kept it to himself.

The house really was a ways outside of town. When they parked in the long, winding driveway, Sam told them, "I can just wait in the car. I don't mind."

"I don't think so." The engine died with a familiar rattle when Dean killed it and tugged the keys free. "How else you gonna get some hands-on experience with the new, improved, twenty-first-century witch?" He and Sham climbed out, the car bouncing on its shocks. "Who knows, you might even spot something we missed."

So Sam had to get out and follow them into the house, its overblown square footage practically screaming "mid-2000s housing bubble," and head on up to the master bedroom. Because that was apparently where the witch had chosen to set up shop.

The bed was gone. Occult symbols were smeared on the walls, books and artifacts and containers probably full of spell ingredients lining the shelves and nightstands. The dresser had been dragged over in front of the sliding glass doors that led out onto the balcony, your standard black altar erected on top. A Coleman camp stove and an upended cauldron sat in the middle of the floor, contents splashed out onto the ground in a soupy fan.

There were a terrifying couple of seconds where he thought something had happened to the witch, since he was looking for an actual corpse. He realized then that the bundle of withered, blackened bones in front of the altar, surrounded by ash and filth, was what Sham and Dean had left in their wake.

Really unfortunate that the owners had chosen to carpet this room in a light vanilla.

"You can look around, if you want," Sham told Sam. "Just. Don't touch anything. You wouldn't believe what kinds of stuff can carry a curse."

Sam did a slow lap of the room as Sham warily catalogued books and Dean, who'd carried up a duffel bag and a fire extinguisher, soaked what was left of the witch in salt and lighter fluid. He wasn't even going to say anything about how stupid it was to do that inside. He didn't want to accidentally volunteer himself to carry it out to the yard.

Sam didn't recognize most of the symbols or the items, bundles of stick and bone, fetishes fashioned from rock and metal. Others he did, but only because of the research he'd done when he was younger, Dad breathing down his neck. Only half aware he was talking out loud, he found himself murmuring, "Not sure we ever took out a witch like this. Most of mine were, y'know. Soccer moms. Grifters."

"Yeah, we know." Dean dropped a lit pack of matches onto the witch, didn't flinch when it went up with a _fwoomph._

"Really old ones like this, ones born with natural talent, are rare," Sham agreed. "Or hard to find, at least. Since most of them know how to keep it under the radar."

"So…" Sam turned to them, something germinating deep down inside him. It wasn't respect or admiration, definitely not. But it might've been somewhere in that family. "This kind of thing. This level, of hunt. It's an everyday occurrence for you?"

They glanced at each other, shrugged in offputting unison.

"Not exactly everyday, but yeah." Dean readied the extinguisher, eyes on the crackling blaze. "Pretty common."

Sam watched as he put out the fire, and then he and Sham burned most of the witch's belongings out on the balcony, sorting through them by some set of criteria Sam gave up on figuring out. He guessed he'd just have to trust them not to throw anything he might need to get home on the pyre. Symbols got marked through with spraypaint, fires doused twice just to make absolutely sure. Drawers and the undersides of shelves were carefully checked.

"I'm gonna start carting books down," Dean told Sham after about an hour, picking up a stack. "You take a look at the rest of this crap, figure out what kinda hex box we're gonna need for it."

Once they were alone, Sham examining everything that was left with a careful flashlight and a frown, the sheer... _bleakness_ of it started to weigh on him. He hadn't wanted to ask Sham anything else about his life. Not really. He just didn't want to know. But somehow, Sam found himself talking anyway.

"So...this is what you do." He cleared his throat. "This is you."

Sham turned that frown on Sam. "What d'you mean?"

"Well…" Fuck it, Sam would have been able to take it if it had been him. He didn't need to be nice. "Y-you're. Y'know. In your thirties. Still hunting. Still driving around in Dad's car, and staying in the same kinda rooms w - you grew up in, dressing like...like…" Sam trailed off, trying to summon the words and failing.

"What's wrong with the way I dress?" Sham looked down at himself.

"Nothing! I mean, nothing. You just look like…"

"A hunter." Sham finished for him, and there was Sam's own tight smile reflected back at him. "Well. We can't all dress in Nike and North Face."

"I didn't mean it like that." Sam self-consciously smoothed his jacket.

"Sure you didn't."

"I didn't!"

"It's fine." A flash of a smile, insincere as it was quick. "Really."

Sham got back to work. Sam got back to watching him. Dean came up with supplies, basic containment charm stuff, went back down to get more. After he left, Sam asked, "You go on every hunt with him?"

"I'm with Dean," Sham said, deliberate and careful as he chalked up the sort of cheap wooden chest you could buy at a craft store, "all the time." He glanced at Sam. "You got a problem with that?"

"I don't have a problem with any of it. Seriously, I don't. I mean, it seems like...you're good at it…" Sam trailed off. He knew it would make it worse, but something felt good about saying it anyway: "It's just. Not what I would've wanted. For myself, I mean."

"Not what I wanted, either." Sham snapped the chest shut like a gunshot. It seemed to ring off the walls of the room.

They didn't finish with everything until the pale, murky portion of early daybreak. Outside the house, almost everything either packed away or burned, Sam leaned against the trunk of the Impala. He straightened up when Dean warned him about scratching the paint, then settled again as soon as his back was turned.

Sam had been worn out even before he got shunted sideways into this reality. It'd been a long day back in his world, and he and his bad shoulder were not looking forward to their first rickety, lumpy motel mattress in decades.

"You ready to head home?" Dean asked Sham. Sam rolled his eyes. _Home._ That was a good one.

"Yeah." Sham kicked gravel over the smoldering remains of something he'd had to anoint with fifty kinds of oil before he could burn it.

"You, uh…" Dean nodded to Sam as he lowered his voice. "Wanna take him back to the bunker, or…?"

Sham squinted. "You wanna just leave him here?"

Dean shrugged. Sam glared at him, but something had caught on the edges of his fraying consciousness.

"What's the bunker?" Neither of them answered him, instead just climbing into the car. Sam followed, wedging himself into the back seat alongside a library's worth of books that reeked of fire and old lady. "Seriously, what's the bunker?"

"It's - " Dean had turned around in his seat to explain, but he cut himself off, raising a finger. "Never mind. I wanna see your face when we roll up."

Sam didn't think he made any expression at all, but Dean whooped.

"Hah! Another classic bitch face."

He put the car into drive, and they pulled away from the house.


	2. Chapter 2

Sam must have fallen asleep at some point during the drive. Face pressed up against the window, engine that thrummed at the toxic heart of his childhood vibrating through his bones. He woke with a jerk when the car stopped, briefly panicked because he couldn't remember where he was, awash in full-blown icy horror when he realized. The memory of everything that had happened calmed him down when it settled on him like a pair of concrete shoes.

They were parked in what looked like some kind of garage. Sham and Dean were climbing out, so Sam warily followed suit, face pounding where it had rested against the glass. Much as he hated the car, part of him was afraid to leave the safety of its confines.

"Where - " Sam had to stop, clear his throat. "Where are we?"

"Home," Sham answered.

Dean must have been able to see how little that answer satisfied Sam, because he told him, "You'll see in a minute." His eyes tracked past Sam, landed on the window, widened. "Dude, you drooled on her? Are you serious?"

Brain still sticky with sleep, Sam went to wipe the smear of saliva off with the sleeve of his jacket, but Dean slammed the door before he could. Sam barely kept himself from flinching.

"Whatever." Dean pulled a duffel out of the popped trunk, hitched it high on his shoulder. "You can clean it up later."

He and Sham led Sam deeper into the garage, which was a lot bigger than he'd realized. They filed past classic cars from bygone eras, some dusty, some which were clearly in the middle of being worked on. It didn't really do anything for his growing confusion. But finally, they reached a door, and Sam followed the two of them inside.

He looked around as they walked. Concrete walls. Well-lit hallways running off in different directions. The doors were neatly labeled, mostly storage rooms. He saw a well-equipped kitchen. Everything had a post-war utilitarianism to it, with just a touch of luxury. More officers' club than barracks.

It wasn't until he realized the place didn't have any windows that he remembered Sham and Dean had called it a bunker.

He had about a million questions, was wildly interested even as he told himself he didn't want to know. But before he could ask anything, there was a familiar voice, gravel-rasp and slightly more inflection than he was used to hearing.

"Sam. Dean. You're back aaaaand...you brought an anomaly with you. Fantastic."

They'd just entered some kind of control room, a glowing map of the world in the center of the room and panels straight off a submarine banking the walls. Sam's ass hit buttons and switches as he backed up fast as he could, and he only vaguely hoped he wasn't pressing on anything important as he plastered himself against the nearest available surface. His breath came fast, and a shot of adrenaline cleared the last of the cobwebs from his mind faster than a flicked Zippo.

How the hell was he going to get away? It wasn't like he could run. And what was one of these things, especially this particular one of these things, doing here anyway? Was this place not warded against them?

Maybe Sham and Dean didn't know. Maybe they hadn't been fucked over the way Sam had back at home. Not that it really mattered, because nothing with wings and a blade should have been able to see him, and yet there Casti- _freaking_ -el was, standing there in a new trench coat, head cocked like a confused chicken and eyes very obviously fixed on Sam. Had coming here wiped him clean? He wanted to look down his shirt at his chest, or check an arm, but he didn't dare move.

"What the hell? What's with you?" Dean demanded. Both he and Sham had tensed, hands automatically straying for their waists. Weapons.

"Do you know," Sam said, pointing at Castiel, "what that is?"

Sham and Dean looked at Castiel. Then back at Sam.

"Uh...a major drain on the wifi?" Dean guessed. Castiel squinted at him.

"An angel," Sham stated.

"And d'you know what he...what he wants from you?" Sam looked back and forth between Sham and Dean.

There was a long, long pause, before Sham, frowning, started, "Wait, d'you think - "

Sam cut him off. He couldn't have cared less what he was about to ask him. Glaring at Castiel, he spit, "Didn't you bring backup? Huh? Where are all the others? Uriel, Zachariah?"

"Dead," Castiel said flatly. "Here, they're dead, most of them. A lot because of me. I'm not on what anybody would call good terms with Heaven, but…" He began to move towards him, walking between Sham and Dean, and Sam instinctively tried to get closer to the wall, jaw clenched. "I suspect things are different for your Castiel. Much as they're different for you."

Castiel stopped. Eyes an unnatural shade of blue, set like marbles in a tired face, swept up and down Sam's body.

"You've warded yourself," Castiel observed. "If we were back where you came from, you'd be completely invisible to me. Even if I were at full power. It's very good work." He glanced behind himself at Sham and Dean, telling them, "A lot like what I did on your ribs."

"Oh...right." Sham frowned, massaging at his chest as he looked at Dean. "Is that still there?"

Castiel cleared his throat, waved a hand at Sam. "I assume there's a story behind...this."

"Yeah, and we'll get you caught up soon as we all get some shuteye." Dean made a come-hither gesture. "Jeff. You're with me."

It only dawned on Sam he was talking to him when he arched an eyebrow. Sam shook his head. "What?"

"Well, I ain't gonna call you Sam."

"Why...why Jeff?" Sham asked, forehead furrowed.

"Jeff Winger." Dean spread his hands, looked back and forth between them. "'Cause, I mean, he's a lawyer, right? And with the hair…" He gestured to his own head, trailed off. "Christ, Sam, d'you even use our Netflix subscription? Whatever. C'mon, Jeff."

Sam followed Dean reluctantly away from Sham and Castiel, looking frequently back at both of them. Dean led him through a spacious library, down a flight of stairs, along a hallway. Everywhere he looked, doors.

"What is this place?" he asked quietly, as the lights buzzed above them.

"We'll catch you up after that shuteye I mentioned earlier, too." This Dean seemed grumpier than Sam remembered his Dean being. Then again, his Dean had always been a pain in the ass.

They stopped in front of one door in particular. Dean opened it, swept an arm inside.

"Here we go. Casa Winchester guest suite, one of...I don't know, couple dozen? Probably oughta count 'em." He smothered a yawn with one thick-fingered hand. "Sheets'll smell musty. Haven't been touched in about sixty years. They're fine, though. Same goes for everything else." He started to walk away. "I'll bring you some of Sammy's clothes in a while here, but you might have to wait on a toothbrush, depending on what I can scrounge up. And far as room service goes - "

"Wait, wait." Sam held out his hands. "You want me to...to sleep here?"

"Thought that was implied."

"What happened to getting me home?"

Dean turned to face him, expression flat and stony. "We'll get to that. But I'm pretty sure Sam told me earlier it's not gonna be an easy fix, and I don't know about you, but I'm running on fumes over here. We need some downtime." He nodded to the room. "Hit the hay and we'll take it by the horns in the morning."

It didn't seem like there was much else he could do: Sam stepped through the doorway, looking around. His neck twinged from his nap in the car.

His first thought was a dorm room, though this was honestly nicer than the one his freshman year at Stanford had been. There was a small-ish bed with a shelf running behind it. A nightstand with a lamp. A desk, a dresser. A half-bath-type compartment with a toilet and sink. Everything reeked of dust, and he remembered what Dean had said about it being empty for the past sixty years. Sam grimaced, feeling a headache coming on, and turned around.

"What was that you were saying about room service?" he asked Dean sarcastically.

"Oh, there isn't any." Dean smiled at him. "This isn't a damn hotel."

He grabbed the knob and slammed the door hard enough to make the light rattle.

* * *

Sham's clothes were weird and uncomfortable against Sam's skin, jeans and a button-up washed in some unfamiliar detergent he didn't like the smell of. The former fit a lot better than the latter, shirt loose in the chest and biceps. This hunter him could probably bench-press a car.

He wished he could have taken a shower when he got up this morning, twitching himself awake in stale sheets, seeing it was just shy of four o'clock. He'd even found the showers, a communal setup straight out of a gym class nightmare. But the idea of being naked in this place made him supremely uncomfortable, and Dean hadn't provided any soap or shampoo.

Sam had found his way back to the kitchen he'd seen when they first brought him in, navigating through the maze of hallways by way of a homing instinct activated by his need for coffee. Much to his surprise, they had the good stuff in terms of grounds and a coffeemaker. Or at least only a single cut below what he was used to. He missed his grinder, and the French press he'd initially felt stupid buying but had learned to love. He told himself he'd be back home soon. Hopefully today.

Sam was sitting at a little table between the kitchen and the coffee prep area, rubbing a hand over the stubble he had coming in, when Sham appeared. Sam tensed automatically, relaxed warily. Sham was in running clothes, faced flushed and breathing hard. He'd look exactly like Sam if it weren't for the long hair, tied back and sweaty, and the scruff. Although the last thing might stop being a discrepancy between them, if Sam couldn't get his hands on a razor soon.

Sham nodded to him. Sam watched him pull a reusable water bottle out of the fridge, take a few hard gulps from it. Finally, still short of breath, Sham greeted, "Hey."

"Hey."

"How'd you sleep?"

"Well…" Sam made a face and rubbed at his neck, where last night's twinge had definitely worsened. Sham smiled a little.

"Yeah, Dean and I had to swap out the pillows. And the mattresses. But hopefully you won't be here long enough for that to be an issue." Quickly, Sham added, "I-I mean. No offense."

"It's fine. I'm hoping for the same thing," Sam told him.

Sham sat down across from him. Sam could smell his sweat, and he'd never realized before how personal the smell of somebody's sweat was, but smelling himself on somebody else was almost enough to send his vision skewing. He closed his eyes, and the threat vanished.

Opening them again, he took a deep breath, then asked Sham, "So what is this place? Exactly. I heard you call it a bunker before, so. It's underground? Who'd it belong to originally? How'd you guys find it, a-and why d'you have an angel living here with you?"

Sham laughed. "That's kind of a few separate questions. Things really are different for you, huh?"

"Guess so."

"First of all, we are underground. Just outside Lebanon, Kansas."

"That's…" Sam swallowed.

"Not far from Lawrence, no. Just a coincidence." Sham took another drink of water. "This place originally belonged to the American chapter of the Men of Letters."

"Sorry, the what? Like, a bunch of English doctorates, or - ?"

"Lemme put it in perspective." Sham set his water aside, spread his hands on the table. "If hunters are, say, random vigilantes, the Men of Letters were the FBI. Or...Interpol, maybe. The American chapter went defunct mid-century."

A lot there that begged asking about, but Sam let it go for now. "So how'd you guys wind up with it? You just stumbled on it, or what?"

Sham smirked. "Kinda. It's...a long story, but the short version's that our grandfather was a Man of Letters. Henry Winchester."

"Thought Henry ran out on Dad." Sam took a sip of coffee to drown the bitter taste in his mouth.

"Yeah, but. He didn't do it on purpose." Sham shook his head. "See, he actually wound up time traveling."

"Oh. So. That's a thing too, huh?"

"So many things that shouldn't be things are actually things. Trust me." Sham sighed wearily, paused for a second, continued. "Anyway. He showed up here, with us. And he died. Killed by a Knight of Hell." Seeing Sam's squint, he clarified, "Demonic heavy hitter. It was the same Knight that killed all the rest of the Men of Letters, actually."

Sam sat back in his seat, trying to process what little he'd been given. Because he got the feeling that Sham was giving him shavings off a story the size of the Bible, both Testaments included. And that a whole lot of things were being dumbed down for his benefit. He resented that. He wanted to know everything, but at the same time...he didn't. It was a familiar sensation for him.

"I'm guessing the whole Henry thing didn't happen in your timeline," Sham said eventually.

"If it did, I didn't notice it."

Sham waited a couple seconds then, frowning, asked, "What else did you wanna know, again?"

"The angel."

"Right. Right." Sham nodded. "He's a friend. Our best friend, probably. He's got a room here, he hunts with us...sometimes he goes out on his own. He'll be helping us get you home."

"Yeah. I guess I can see how having a tame angel on hand could be useful." Especially because Sam remembered Castiel saying something about not being at full power last night.

"It's really not like that. Cas is family."

Sam nodded. After a few seconds had passed, he tentatively asked, "Even though he's not human?"

"That...really doesn't matter as much as it used to," Sham said awkwardly. "Uh, Rowena? The one I was trying to call yesterday? I'm still trying to get a hold of her, I think she just doesn't wanna talk to me right now…" He rolled his eyes. "She's a witch. A lot like the one that brought you here. And there's another hunter we know. Garth. He got turned. Werewolf. Married into a pack that doesn't kill people."

Both hands wrapped around his cup, Sam stared across the table, and felt a spreading warmth in his stomach that had nothing to do with the coffee.

"You don't kill things," he said softly. "You don't kill people, when they turn."

"Not unless we have to," Sham agreed. "I'm not gonna try and tell you we always work out a solution, ninety-nine percent of our cases still end bloody, but I think we do our best to. Y'know. Weigh the situation."

Sam smiled. "That's really. That's incredible." He took a sip of coffee. "Surprised you roped Dean into that."

The mood shifted. There was something aggressive in Sham's head tilt as he asked, "What d'you mean?"

"He's just." Sam shook his head. "He's exactly like Dad."

"No." Sham's tone had gone flat. "He's not."

Sam was silent for a while, trying to parse out the dangerous ground he was standing on, weighing getting what he wanted to out against taking a punch to the face from somebody who definitely outweighed him. Eventually, he asked, "Is he gone here, too? Dad, I mean."

"Yep." The question didn't seem to unwind Sham all that much. "For years."

"Yeah." Sam looked around. "None of this would've happened if he were still around."

"Maybe it would've."

Sam laughed. "No, it definitely wouldn't have. Uh, maybe he was different over here, but my version of Dad...there's no way he would've been cool with letting monsters live. Or staying in one place." He looked at Sham. "Was he different? Or did you just somehow forget about everything he did and dust off your rose-colored glasses?"

Sham didn't answer. The fingers of one hand tapped on the table as he swallowed, looking away. When his eyes drifted back to Sam, he asked, "The apocalypse. Did that happen in your world?"

The caffeine had done its work, rooted Sam's nerves in a solid foundation. He didn't so much as twitch. "Pretty sure the world's still standing back home."

"You know that's not what I mean," Sham said quietly. "You knew who Cas was. You _recognized_ him. You asked if we knew what he wanted from us, a-and he said you're warded against angels. What happened? Back home?"

Sam swallowed, buying a few seconds to decide how much to tell Sham. Then he realized that there wasn't much reason to keep any of it to himself.

"He and his cohort showed up a few times," he replied. "Talking about...seals. The end of the world. It took a while to get the whole story out of them."

"Were there any demons?" Sham asked deliberately.

Sam felt his face twist into an automatic smile. His fingers twitched, and the ring on the one weighed much heavier than grooved silicone should.

"Oh, there were plenty of those," he promised. "I pieced some of it together from them, too." He rubbed at his eyes, gritty and stinging after a restless night. "Lucifer was real. Hell, too, and he was down there in a cage. He was supposed to break out, and then he'd possess me, and Michael would hop in Dean, and they'd duke it out for the fate of the world. As it was written. As God intended it. But I wasn't gonna do that."

Sham's eyes were on him, unblinking, jaw set. Sam couldn't read his face. The carefully-blank expression was a familiar one.

"I warded myself," Sam went on. "I stayed away from Dean. And I made damn clear to everyone and everything that came knocking that they were gonna have to find another meatsuit for Lucifer to wear to the end of the world, if they got him out."

"If?"

Sam could barely hear Sham. He closed his eyes, gestured aimlessly as he shook his head.

"Apparently, they did eventually manage to spring him, but I wasn't gonna let him ride me." Sam opened his eyes. Sham was still staring at him, but his face had changed. "What?"

"So, y-you didn't - you didn't release him?" Sham stumbled over the words.

"No, of course not, how would I even - "

"You didn't say yes."

"Why the _fuck_ would I do that?"

The two of them sat there. The silence was near absolute, only the background noise of the bunker's pipes and vents around them. Sam couldn't look away from Sham.

"What did you do?" Sam asked quietly.

Sham took in a deep, deep breath. "I made a few mistakes."

"Uh, yeah, I'll say you did," Sam snapped back, getting to his feet. The chair screeched across the floor.

"I fixed it." Sham rose, too. "Maybe I said yes to Lucifer, but it was so I could drag him back down into Hell with me. I sealed him away again. Him, Michael, and me."

"Well, you're here now," Sam pointed out. "So what happened after that?" When Sham didn't answer, he smirked. "Yeah. I'm guessing nothing good."

"Dean fixed that one for me," Sham grated out.

"And how much damage was done in the meantime?" Sam asked him. "How much damage did you do while Lucifer was in you? Before he was in you, even, after you let him out?" He put both hands on the table, leaned on them, voice rising as fury and disgust matured in his blood. "What kind of fucking disaster _are_ you? A hunter. Squatting in the bomb shelter of a secret society who've all been dead for decades, with Dean, of all people, and Castiel."

Sham opened his mouth. Sam talked over him before he could speak.

"You think Dad was some kind o-of saint who would've gotten along with monsters just because they didn't do anything wrong. You let Lucifer out. You said yes to him, and something awful happened afterwards, and...am I missing anything? How much did I leave out?"

Sham stood there, jaw tight and twitching the entire time, but on that last question, he finally dropped the eye contact. Sam straightened up.

"There's more," he guessed. "A _lot_ more."

Sham closed his eyes. Sam waited, seconds dropping like pennies into a jar, but he didn't say anything else.

"You'd better get me home as soon as possible," Sam told Sham eventually. "And then you can go back to wrecking this universe." He pinned him down with his eyes, and put the full weight of every possible connotation behind the word as he stated, "You're a monster."

He backed away from the table, nudging the chair out of the way. He didn't turn his back on Sham, standing there like every muscle in his body was electrocution-tight, until he was through the doorway. Then he turned around and headed back to the room they'd put him in.


	3. Chapter 3

By midmorning, Sam had been fetched from his room to sit around a table in the library with the other three and do research. Sham and Dean were on laptops, Castiel digging through a pile of books. Sam leafed carefully through some of the oldest documents he'd ever seen, wondering if he ought to be wearing gloves, with Sham's various observations on witches and magic and alternate universes open on a borrowed tablet in front of him.

He did have to admit that the guy took incredible notes. Sam was definitely learning a lot, way more than he ever wanted to know, and it both dug at an old wound and scratched at an old itch.

They shared their findings every once in a while, everyone but Castiel drinking coffee. (Sam watched Dean make his liberally Irish every time he refilled the cup. Not like their Dad his ass.) Mostly, they ran into dead ends with spells that weren't complete, or were only theoretical and might have extremely negative consequences, or required ingredients they just weren't going to be able to get their hands on.

Honestly, Sam was nearly ready to suggest they try one of the spells that had a high probability of turning his entire universe inside out just to get away from Sham. He could feel the tension like a heavy, knotted rope strung between the two of them. He tried not to look at him. Seethed silently at him. And, though he knew it was perverse, felt more secure in his own choices.

So this was what would have happened, if he'd somehow wound up going back to hunting. He would have personally released Lucifer. Been directly responsible for the deaths of, probably, millions. And god only knew what else Sham had done, since he didn't seem super eager to talk about it and Sam definitely wasn't going to ask again.

Around noon, Dean cleared his throat and stretched, saying, "Think I'm gonna go rustle something up."

"I could go get lunch," Castiel volunteered.

"Nah. I feel like cooking." Dean glanced at Sam. "Jeff. Wanna give me a hand?"

For the first time in Sam's life, being alone with Dean would actually be a welcome relief. He got up and followed him into the kitchen, with its weird blend of mid-century and cutting-edge appliances.

"Y'know, I Googled Jeff Winger," Sam started as they entered, "and I really don't think - "

The loud rattle of a block of knives cut him off. Dean had pulled one out, begun to sharpen it, eyes on Sam. They were the same color as the ones Sam remembered on his Dean, but a lot like Sham's, they were different. Something hard and almost feral flickering at the edges. And, actually...were they even the same color? Or were they a few shades darker?

He forced himself not to swallow. He wasn't going to validate this laughably-clichéd attempt to intimidate him.

"So you actually are a lawyer, right?" Dean asked after they'd been standing there for a bit.

"Uh huh. Lucky guess?"

"Nah, Sam told me." More quiet, only the grating metallic scrape of knife-sharpening. Then, suddenly, "You ever saved the world?"

"Uh...I wouldn't...say that," Sam started slowly, caught off-guard. At least it was the first time today. "But I've gotten a lot of innocent people acquitted. That probably counts for something, somewhere."

Dean nodded. He said, almost casually, "Sam's saved the world."

Sam barked out a laugh. "You really think that what he did was 'saving the world?'"

"Yeah. I do."

"He…" Sam stabbed a finger towards the library. "...is the one who let your Lucifer out. All he did was clean up his own mess."

"Maybe," Dean agreed, "but I'm pretty sure that's still saving the world. Wasn't the only time he did it, either." He was still sharpening. "That's not even counting all the individual lives he's saved. Way more than you, I'm willing to bet."

"Yeah. Right." Sam snorted. "Wonder how many he's gotten killed. It's a small miracle he hasn't gotten _you_ killed. I mean, we both know how much he sucks at hunting, even Dad thought so…"

He trailed off. There was something about Dean's face. Sam's tongue felt a little numb in his mouth as he asked, incredulously, "Did he get you killed?"

"No," Dean replied, "I died for him. I went to Hell." A pause. He shrugged. "I mean, I got better, obviously. But it happened. And you'd better believe that Sam did everything in his power he could to keep it from happening."

Sam just laughed, shaking his head. "I can't believe you died for him. Of all people. I mean, sacrificing yourself for someone's a better way to get your ticket punched than I honestly expected when it came to you, but...him? I'd call him a screwup, but that feels like I'm giving him too little credit for what he did."

Dean smiled. He glanced down at his hands, stopped sharpening the knife. When he looked back up at Sam, he commented, "You are just one nasty son of a bitch, aren't you?"

"See, this is why I hate being around you," Sam snapped back. "This is what you bring out in me."

"Right. It's my fault." Dean nodded. "It's your Dean's fault."

"I can't help it," Sam said through gritted teeth. "Not after what you - he did."

Dean didn't say anything, butcher knife resting against the sharpener, point aimed at his boots. He was studying Sam. With every second that passed, Sam felt more and more like something ugly and stunted under a microscope. Just because...what? He wasn't this world's Sam? He'd killed fewer people?

"Let me guess," Sam started, angry. "Dad told you to look after Sammy. And you're still Daddy's perfect little wind-up killing machine. Doesn't take a whole lot of imagination, my Dean's exactly the same. Follows orders to a T. He'd cut off his own foot without a second thought if our dad told him to."

"Sure, that was part of it," Dean agreed reasonably. "To start with, years and years ago. But now, it's my choice. 'Cause my Sam's worth it."

"He's fucked up," Sam stated.

"I'm fucked up," Dean replied. "Trust me, nobody's ever hated him more than I have, sometimes. But he's worth it. And I wouldn't hesitate to put my ass or my soul on the line for him again. Never have before."

"Well." Sam smiled tightly. "Good for you."

Dean smiled back, then took a breath. "Y'know, I've seen what it's doing to him. Having you around. And that was even before whatever the hell happened between the two of you this morning." He set the sharpener aside and pushed off the counter, walked up to the island between them. "I've died for him before, yeah. But I've also killed for him before. And if we can't figure out a way to stick your sorry ass back in the hellhole you crawled out of…" Dean tested the sharpness of the knife, didn't even flinch when it cut him. Just watched a thin red trickle run down his hand and wrist. "Or if you won't leave on your own…"

Sam barely saw it when Dean slammed the knife into a wooden cutting board resting on the island, split it in half with a _crack_ that vibrated through his sternum. He moved so fast, faster than a guy his age, carrying around as many injuries as he had to be, should have been able to. The metal of the knife sang and there was no way Sam could have kept himself from jumping.

"I'll do it again."

Sam looked at Dean. His eyes were definitely darker than the ones he'd grown up with, back in his own world. There was something in them, too, Hell-forged and deadly, downright inhuman. Sam could hardly breathe, kidneys in an ice bath.

"You might think Sam's not worth dying for," Dean told him pleasantly, "but I think you're just making the mistake of assuming he's anything at all like you."

Silence. Sham broke it, calling from the library: "Dean? You guys okay in there?"

"Yep," Dean called back, and then suddenly, he'd snapped completely out of it, was back to normal. To Sam, he said, "You're gonna have to grab me a paper towel if you don't want blood all over your sandwich."

Clenching his jaw, Sam went to get him one. He didn't let himself wobble, didn't look at Dean, and kept up a steady mantra in his head, chanting that it wouldn't be long before he was home.

* * *

Days passed, piling quickly up into a week. They were still focused on research, and had still only found useless crap. Sam knew it was technically progress, but it definitely didn't feel like it. At least they'd figured out that the witch had been originally trying to draw in alternate universe versions of herself, as many as possible, to make an army.

"But instead, she got you," Dean said over the screen of his laptop. "Spell really backfired, huh?"

Sam glared. Dean just smirked back at him.

Sam avoided both him and Sham as best he could. Ironically, Castiel was the one he seemed to get along with the best, but Sam shut down any effort he made to have a real conversation with him. He'd gotten his fill of talking to these people, and he'd definitely had just about all he could stomach of Castiel back in his own universe.

Time marched on. It would have all blended together if he hadn't been able to leave the bunker to go running, wearing an old T-shirt and sweats from Sham, grudgingly impressed by Lebanon's parks and trails. Sham and Dean didn't seem worried about leaving him unsupervised. Dean, in fact, usually looked disappointed when he realized Sam had come back.

It seemed to wear on Sam more and more every second, being here. In a place he wasn't wanted and didn't want to be, somewhere he didn't belong. He wondered if the same amount of time was passing at home. He jerked awake just as he was falling asleep at night, panicking about the cases he'd had on his docket when a spell gone haywire sucked him sideways through reality, practically tearing his hair out over missing more than a week of work. He had a single mother arrested for an unused weed pipe in her car on his docket. A fifteen-year-old who'd been bullied into taking the fall for a robbery. What would happen to them if he didn't show up for court?

That, combined with the shitty 1960s mattress wreaking havoc on every part of his body that touched it, pried the nights away from him in bits and pieces.

Sometimes, laying awake, occasionally clicking his Fitbit to check the time, Sam wondered if his firm had called the police yet. If his apartment had been checked, if he'd been declared a missing person. They knew he was related to Dean Winchester, a famous and still-at-large serial killer to most of the world. He'd be the first suspect, and that fact ignited both an ugly thrill and a wisp of concern inside Sam.

All of that was, of course, assuming anyone had even bothered to report him missing.

One night, a couple days past the one-week anniversary of his showing up here, Sam was just getting out of the shower. He tried to shower late so nobody walked in on him, since these versions of himself and Dean and Castiel had apparently thrown themselves wholeheartedly into communal living and had no sense of privacy whatsoever. Towel knotted around his waist, he was carefully shaving in the mirror when Sham, startled, said, "O-oh my god."

Sam jumped, the razor slipped along the line of his jaw, and he swore loudly as he clapped a hand to his face and spun around. His eyes felt as wide as Sham's looked. Sham was staring at him, mouth open, and Sam knew what had his attention: the sigils and Enochian, done in black ink, that started below his collarbone and wound around his shoulders, chest, stomach, and back, stopping at a point on his arms where they just barely didn't peek out the sleeves of T-shirts. The towel hid the stuff on his hips and thighs, but Sham would be able to see where it continued over his knees and calves, all the way down to his ankles.

"I've never seen warding like that." Sham swallowed. "Well, I've got a little bit of it myself, but mine's internal."

He touched his chest. Sam dripped onto the floor in the silence.

"I had to get the angels to leave me alone," Sam said eventually, hand still on his jaw as he turned back to the mirror.

"Who did it?"

"I drew up the pattern myself. An artist in the Bay Area put it on me. She was really good, but didn't know what any of it meant. Pretty sure she thought I was in a cult or something." Grimacing, he moved his hand, peered at the wound in the steamy mirror. "Ran me fifteen thousand. Twenty separate sessions; I wanted to make sure she got everything right. It was my life on the line."

"Huh." It was thoughtful, a little awkward. "Sorry, I didn't mean to...I didn't wanna scare you. Did you cut yourself too bad?"

"Well, I'm definitely bleeding." Sam glanced at him. "You got a styptic pencil around here?"

"We usually just use toilet paper."

"Of course you do." Sam heaved a sigh. He finished up, aware of Sham watching him the entire time, increasingly annoyed and uncomfortable. He was tired, he just wanted to go to bed and...not sleep, probably. He splashed his face with water, cleared his throat. "Uh, if you don't mind, I was gonna go get dressed - "

"Right. Yeah. Sorry." Sham shuffled back, out the door. "When you're done. You don't have to, but. Would you mind meeting me in the library? I'd like to talk."

_Jesus Christ._ "Sure."

Sam left the bathroom and headed back to his room, Sham's eyes on him. He knew that even if he dropped the towel, it probably wouldn't be anything Sham hadn't seen before, minus the tattoos. It pissed him off and unnerved him all over again. Sharing almost every piece of himself with somebody who'd barely managed to haul the world back from the brink of an apocalypse he'd caused in the first place.

Sam considered just not going to the library. He doubted Sham would come looking for him. But some sense of obligation drove him down there in jeans and a flannel, since it felt wrong to go in the clothes he used for sleeping, toilet paper unfortunately plastered to his jaw. Sham had a few lamps on and was sitting at a table, a decanter of amber fluid and two matching cut-crystal glasses in front of him. Sam took the chair opposite.

"We found this stuff down in one of the storerooms." Sham nodded at the decanter. "Whiskey. 1932. Dean was thrilled."

"Hm." Sam nodded, inspecting it as Sham leaned forward to pour some into both glasses. "You...know it's only as old as when it was bottled, right? Whiskey doesn't age outside the barrel."

Sham snorted. "Yeah, I tried explaining that to him. I don't think he gets it."

He nudged one glass over to Sam, who took a tentative sip. He had to admit that, no matter how old it technically was, it wasn't bad. He wasn't even a whiskey guy (just one more thing Dean had gotten from their dad and he hadn't) and he could tell that.

It was a while before either of them said anything. Sam wondered if this world had always been full of so many awkward silences, or if it was just since he'd come here.

Sham finally took a breath, so deep it had to burn in his chest. "I owe you an apology."

Sam frowned at him, and discovered "confused vindication" was an emotion a person could feel.

"You were right," Sham went on, shaking his head. "All of it. Everything you said. I-I'd like to believe I've always tried to do the right thing, but the fact is I've hurt people. By accident and on purpose. I've been selfish, I've been weak, I've done things I can't ever undo. And I know all that. But...it's still hard to hear out loud." He had been staring down at his class, but now he raised his eyes to Sam's. "Especially from you."

"What d'you mean?"

"Well, I like to think I'm at peace with how things turned out for me." Sham gestured at the bunker around them. "That I've learned from my mistakes, and I'm doing the best I can now. But it's been tough, having you around. Seeing how I would've turned out, if I hadn't…"

He trailed off. Sam supplied, "Gone back to hunting?"

Sham barely smirked. "Yeah."

Sam shook his head, looked out into the bunker's atrium, the map table and the staircase. He laughed a little. "I just can't figure it out." He returned his attention to Sham. "What would've gotten you back into it anyway? I mean, what was it? What made you turn your back on literally everything I - you worked for?"

Sham laughed, too. It was bleak. "Well, to start with, a demon had my girlfriend murdered." He spun his glass on its rim. "Same demon that killed Mom, actually."

Sam flinched at the reminder, grief and rage unfurling. He tamped them down same as he always did, compartments locking back up in the filing cabinets of his brain, and waited for Sham to continue. A beat passed. Two. Finally, he prompted, "And?"

Sham looked like Sam had just tossed what was left of his whiskey in his face. Sam felt an icy-hot flush of panic, ripped straight out of his teenage years, at having said the wrong thing. More tamping to keep control of his face and breathing.

"Did...back in your universe," Sham started, slowly. "Did Azazel kill Mom?"

"If that's the one with the yellow eyes, then yeah." So many nightmares filled with honeybee eyes and flames, as described by his father.

"Did you meet Jess?" Sham asked.

Sam had to look away. The tamping didn't work so well this time, not after the lid had sprung open twice in such quick succession. Quietly, he said, "I don't...really wanna talk about her."

Sham was stunned. Sam could feel it between them, laying in the air like wax cooling brittle. His mouth was dry, his stomach jittery, the whiskey sour at his core. He still had a hand on his glass, and squeezed the pattern of the crystal slowly into his palm.

He was about to ask Sham what the hell he was thinking when, very softly, Sham said, "Oh, my god."

"What?" Sam snapped, glaring.

"She died, didn't she?" He despised the way Sham had started to look at him. "Jess. Azazel killed her, and you just - let it go."

"I didn't just 'let it go.'" Sam let go of his glass, laid fingers against the opposite hand as he counted out points. "I warded everything top to bottom. I made sure everybody around me was safe, and then I pulled back. No friends, no dating. Nobody got hurt because they were too close to me ever again."

"And it didn't occur to you to just." Sham's mouth twitched. "Take out the thing that did it?"

"If I'd gone after it," Sam said deliberately, "if I'd let myself get pulled back into all that _crap_ , then it would've won. Jess would've died for nothing. I mean, what would I have had to show for it? For her? Dipping my toes into being a real person for a couple years just so I could waltz right back into being a freak?"

Sham laughed, and it was ugly when it was incredulous. Did Sam's sound like that?

"So you went to law school. And you just let Dean look for Dad on his own."

"I took out the Woman in White. That was all he asked me to do, all I said I'd do. And look what fucking happened."

"You didn't care." Sham shrugged. "Not at all?"

"Fuck him!" Sam exclaimed. "I wasn't going to drop everything to look for Dad, of all people! The guy was a raging alcoholic, way too unstable to be carrying around all those fucking guns, and what he did to us? He didn't give two shits. It was all Mom, Mom, Mom, him and Dean both, and she wasn't even around to appreciate the revenge quest he dragged us along for the ride on. He put us in front of things that could've killed us, that probably did kill us somewhere, if there are other universes. He let us _starve._ And I don't get...how you don't remember that." Staring across the table, Sam shook his head. "How the hell did you forgive him? After everything? Do you think you owe him that for doing a fraction of the bare minimum to keep us alive?"

Sham was staring at nothing, jaw tense. His eyes flicked up to Sam and he asked, "It didn't occur to you to do it for Dean? Going after Dad?"

"I wasn't going anywhere with Dean." The words burned with so much anger, undiluted by the decade that had passed, that Sam's mouth might as well have been full of acid. "Jess was his fault."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"D'you really think it was a coincidence?" Sam demanded, disbelieving. "I'm completely fine, completely safe, for four whole years. And then the same thing that killed Mom shows up and murders my girlfriend just days after my hunter brother comes crashing back into my life."

Sham stared at him for a long few seconds, then shook his head. "You can't be serious."

"Best case scenario, it was an accident," Sam replied grimly. "Worst case…" He trailed off, shrugged jerkily enough for it to hurt. "If things'd played out like the demons and angels all wanted, Dean would've gotten to be the big hero. Just like always. Maybe somebody sold it to him that way."

"You really think it was Dean's fault." With a little laugh, Sham fell back in his chair, face incredulous. "You really think...he might've done it on purpose."

"Of course it was his fault," Sam snapped. "He spent the last four years hunting! I got out."

Sham nodded silently to himself, then asked, "What about your visions?"

Sam said nothing. It felt like there was whiskey in his throat, but it tasted more like gasoline.

"I mean, of course you had them, too," Sham went on. "You don't have angels showing up and telling you you're Lucifer's true vessel unless you're full of demon blood. Which means you saw Jess die weeks before it actually happened. You knew there was something wrong with you. And yeah, it was scary, I get that, I kept it from Dean for months 'cause I didn't know how to deal with it. But eventually, I realized it wasn't the kinda thing I could keep buried."

"It was for me," Sam told him stiffly. "I buried that. My childhood. Dean. Everything else that made me a freak."

"Yeah," Sham agreed, "I guess you did." A second later, he cleared his throat, and changed the subject. "So, tell me...what your world's like. Not for you. For everybody else."

"It's fine."

"Is it?" Sham asked, squinting. "'Cause...Lucifer still got out, but you didn't ride him back down into the Cage. You and Dean weren't together, and maybe that prevented a lot of shit, I'll give you that, but you also didn't have each other to clean up god-only-knows how many messes. Solve, jeez, _hundreds_ of major and minor cases. So." Sham shrugged, and then this voice started to rise as he leaned forward. "What's been happening for the last ten years? How long did the Apocalypse last, Sam? What's the death toll? How much is even left, back where you came from?"

"What d'you want me to do?!" Sam exclaimed, throwing his hands up. "I'm just one guy! The blood's been outta my system for years, it's not like I could have stopped any of it!"

"I did."

"Yeah? A-and you did a good job, huh?"

"Yeah, I did, actually. Better than you, at least, but that bar's pretty fucking low, isn't it?" Sham planted his hands on the table, bearing down. "Just - how are you so goddamn self-absorbed? You're acting like a fourteen-year-old, you're so damn childish - "

" _I'm_ childish?" Sam interrupted, furious. "How about the way you hang off Dean? How 'bout your hair?"

"What about my hair?"

"Well, I probably would've thought it was pretty cool when I was eighteen," Sam replied causticly.

Sham set his jaw.

"So you let yourself get sucked back into hunting." Sam shook his head. "So you managed to stumble your way into saving a few people. And how much damage d'you think you caused trying to play hero and live up to Dad?"

"How much damage d'you think you've caused?" Sham returned. "Sitting on your ass."

"Don't flip this." Sam jabbed a finger at him. "I know who I am. I know why I'm doing what I'm doing, and I'm proud of what I've done. The life I've built, back home. Can you say that? Can you really, honestly say you're proud of everything that's happened? Are you proud of running away from school? Of letting Lucifer out? Of everything else?"

Sham lifted his chin. He studied Sam, then quietly began, "I'm not proud of releasing Lucifer. I'm not proud of a lot of things. I wish I could go back, erase all of them. But 'running away?' No. When I went to college, _that_ was running away. Leaving Stanford with Dean, figuring out where I was needed and where I could do the most good, trying as hard as I could to make up for all my mistakes...that was something different." He was quiet for a moment, and rage bucked like a horse inside Sam's skull when he said, "I grew up."

"Oh." Sam forced a smirk, humorless. "You grew up, huh? Went back to hunting. Almost ended the world. Forgave Dad. If that's what growing up looks like, I think I'm fine where I am. Thanks."

"Y'know - " Sham glared across the table. "Yeah. I did forgive Dad. For everything. But I didn't do it for him."

"Really."

"I forgave him for me. And for Dean. Same reason I've done anything that ever did any good." Sham laughed a little. "I'm not proud of everything. Hell, maybe I'm not even proud of most of it, when you pull it all apart. But what I've done for us? I'll stand behind that."

A bitter taste, a lot like burnt plastic, was sitting heavy in Sam's mouth. He snorted and looked away. "Give it a rest. I know what you did to Dean."

Sham's back stiffened. That was obviously a nerve.

"At least I was there for him," he said quietly. "At least I'm here now. At least I tried. And you can lie to yourself all you want, you can even believe it, but that's more than I can say for you.

There were so many things Sam wanted to say that it felt like he was choking on them, so many words crowding in his throat, slicing him mute with their sharp edges. He could map out every point in Sham's life where he'd gone wrong, starting with leaving Stanford with Dean, and he would have if he'd thought he would listen.

Sam hadn't ever regretted any of it. His own story. Especially now that he'd seen what would have happened if he'd done anything different.

So he didn't understand why he was hurting right now, under his skin. Why the pain and the fury had been rising for this entire conversation, like Sham had a direct line to his emotions. Why he couldn't seem to get himself under control.

It only got worse when Sham started to laugh.

"Y'know, for the past week, it's been…" Sham shook his head wonderingly. " _Killing_ me to have you around. Because I thought you were the ideal version of me. The version where I did everything right, where I made the best choices, where I was perfect." He looked at Sam, somehow made eye contact even though Sam didn't want to let him. "But you're not, are you? You're not any of that."

"You think you are?" Sam spat back at him.

"No," Sham replied, rising slowly to his feet, "but I know I'm better than you."

Sam knew they were exactly the same height. They were the same in everything but muscle, scars, and hair. But he could have sworn that, as Sham stood there, looking down at him, he was taller.

"You know, you were half-right. What you said the morning after we got in." How did he sound so fucking calm? "One of us is definitely a monster. But it's not me."

He stayed for a second longer. Then he turned around and walked straight-backed out of the library, leaving Sam alone with the lamp and the whiskey, shadows pooling on all sides.


	4. Chapter 4

Sam wanted to leave. Just get up, go outside, and bolt the second he hit the night air, so he wouldn't have to think about anything ever again but the pull of muscle on bone and the strain of lungs and heart, thundering at his core. It wasn't like anyone here would miss him. Or back home, honestly. And by this point, how much of a chance of getting home did he even have?

But then he wanted to stay, because no matter what Sham had implied, he didn't run away. He'd go and find him, either out in the hall or in his room, and he'd -

A second after the words in Sam's head dissolved into sensations (flesh pulping under his hands shockwaves juddering up his arms from punches that took his full weight the give of a collapsing body), he dropped his face into his hands, winding his fingers through his hair and squeezing until it hurt. The rage, a toxic, inhuman breed he hadn't felt in several years now, ebbed slowly away, leaving him feeling exhausted and unstable.

I don't want to be that, he thought weakly to himself. And then he wondered if Sham had ever felt that. That...taste of Hell, that acid sliver, melting on the tongue, of what it was like to be a demon. He knew the Dean in this world definitely had.

Thinking about Dean made him think about the car. About leaving, again. Finding the keys. But that wouldn't really be any better than going on foot, wouldn't get him anywhere in a world he knew nothing about, and it was still running away.

Sam wound up just sitting there in the dark library for close to an hour, hating Sham with an ugly intensity that bound up all of him inside of it, drinking whiskey that made him gag after the first glass. He walked the careful tightrope of emotions that would get dangerous if he slipped, and thought about what Sham had said to him, what he'd said back. A perfect record of their conversation played over and over and over again in his head.

Sam didn't know what time it was when he got up, swaying a little on his feet as the world started to go fuzzy and unreal around him. He didn't care, either. He snagged the tablet off the end of the table, and went back to his room.

He threw himself heavily down on the bed. The springs screamed the second he hit, frame knocking against the wall, and he was fifteen all of a sudden, fresh off a hunt that'd pressed bruises into his skin and a lecture from his father that had his ears still ringing.

It was vivid enough he might've fallen asleep for a second, but he wrenched himself out of it, woke the tablet up. He squinted as the blue light scalded his eyes, and opened the search engine.

"Just how good are you?" he whispered. "Really."

Research had always been his forte. Even drunk and smarting from everything Sham had accused him of, it came easily. He looked up things that he remembered from his own world. Things that had come up over the past week. From there a rabbit hole opened up underneath him, and he was falling.

There were conspiracy theories, sites, cameos and mentions in a shitty ghost-hunting webseries, a series of cheap books he spent way too much time researching (work of some sort of psychic, obviously). But mostly it was news articles. Cold, hard facts he could piece together.

There was a part of him that didn't want to know. Just like always. But for the first time in over a decade, the part that did want to know, that wanted to know everything, that always had and always did ever since he'd learned to read, was stronger, and so Sam kept going. Mapping out the quilt of saved lives and averted calamities that lay over the country like a fine mesh of steel-woven lace.

And all this, everything he found. It was just the stuff that had gotten reported on, that had made its way online. It wouldn't be the entire picture, the whole story.

Sam held onto the storm inside him with both hands and his teeth, too. But eventually, he forced himself to start letting go. By the time it had calmed, he ached the same way he had the night he'd woken up here.

He was laying on his back when the alarm clock went off, jangling itself right over the edge of the nightstand. He let it beat itself broken on the floor as he stared sightlessly up at the ceiling above him, a dead tablet next to him and exactly zero sleep under his belt.

There was a knock not too long after that. Sam slowly began to push himself up, joints creaking, but Sham was already opening the door, apparently unlocked.

Sam half-expected a fist to the face. Or maybe even a bullet. He would have half-welcomed either with varying degrees of lukewarm enthusiasm.

Instead, fully dressed and with a duffel slung over one shoulder, Sham told him, "Get up. I know how to get you home."

They stopped in the kitchen so Sham could snag a thermos off the counter, but otherwise, pulled a straight path right into the garage. Sham tossed the duffel in the back of the Impala, then climbed in behind the wheel. Sam couldn't see any choice beyond getting in next to him.

Sham doubled over, began rooting around under the seat like he knew exactly what he was looking for. Sam watched, tense, until he pulled out some kind of adaptor. One end went in the tape deck, the other plugged into his phone. He fiddled with it, then put it down and started the car. The engine made the pain of Sam's headache, sitting sluggish and nauseated in his skull, vibrate.

They were on the outskirts of Lebanon before music started to play, Nirvana filling the car. Sam glanced at the radio in surprise, apparently obvious enough about it for Sham to notice.

"Sorry." Sham offered him a self-deprecating smirk, the first emotion Sam had seen from him all morning. "I was a teenager in the nineties. An angsty teenager in the nineties."

"So was I," Sam pointed out, and they very nearly smiled at each other.

It hadn't occurred to Sam that they would have the same taste in music. Not now and not back then. But up until one crucial point, they'd essentially been the same person, hadn't they?

Sham took them through town and then out, onto the plains. Staring out the window at the rolling infinity of the landscape, Sam realized he hadn't been anyplace like this since he was a teenager, crisscrossing the entire country in his father's wake. The memories still hurt. But this morning, the sour taste they left in his mouth was more guilt than hate, and he couldn't remember the last time that had happened.

He didn't want to talk. His bones felt like concrete inside him, weighing him down, jaw too heavy for words. He didn't know how much of that he could assign to not sleeping and how much was something else. But he did manage to eventually ask, "Where are we going?"

"Just wanna make sure we're a good ways out," Sham replied after clearing his throat. "I jerry-rigged the ritual I'm gonna try, and I don't know what'll happen if it backfires, but. Can't be a bad idea to not have any other people around."

Sam was silent again, going back and forth on the other question he wanted to ask. Finally, he decided it couldn't make anything worse. Thinking about the conversation Dean had had with him back in the bunker's kitchen, he asked Sham, "Are you gonna kill me?"

He'd meant for it to come out half-joking. He didn't hit a note anywhere near that.

"Wha - ? No!" Sham looked at him like he couldn't believe he'd even thought of it. "Why would I do that? Would - would you have killed me, if I showed up back where you're from?"

"Well, no, but…" Sam trailed off. He wanted to say they weren't the same person, but he knew that Sham would take it the wrong way. The way Sam would have meant it before last night.

"I'm not gonna kill you," Sham said deliberately, eyes back on the road. Then he sighed heavily, through his nose. "And I owe you another apology." Sam didn't even have a chance to ask him what the hell he was talking about before he started, "What I said last night - "

Sam cut him off. "You don't need to do that."

Sham looked at him, reluctant, puzzled. Sam forced a deep breath into his lungs, and his chest hitched like he'd been crying. Hesitantly, he told him, "I'm...the one who oughta be sorry here."

Something in Sham's face had cleared and leveled when he asked, "Are you?"

"Yes."

"What for?"

"What I said to you." Sam kept going before he could lose his nerve, and soon enough, it was like running down a hill. He couldn't stop, just went faster and faster. Had to pray he wouldn't fall on his face in a nest of rocks. "I was wrong. And you were right, a-and I hate it. I wanna think I'm a good person, right? Like you said. Everybody does, everybody tries so damn hard to convince themselves they did the best they could with the hand they were dealt, but - "

Sham tried to interrupt. Sam talked over him until he closed his mouth.

"I'm a lawyer, and yeah, the justice system needs reform like nobody's business, and I'm trying, I wanna try, but even if you really stretch it, I've only honestly, actually saved...what, four people? Five? And you. You saved the whole world. More than once. Not to mention...so many people, that I let die back home." He rubbed at his eyes, burning. "I've gotten so good at hating people, and telling myself it's not my problem, and pretending not to see and feel what's right in front of me that...I'm not sure I even know who I am anymore. I'm not sure I have for years."

Sam's voice cracked, painfully. Sham stared at him. He wasn't looking at the road much anymore, but it was flat and straight and early in the morning, so Sam guessed it was okay.

"You said you thought I might be the ideal version of you, but I think that's flipped. I think...you're what I would've been if I'd just done things right." He swallowed. "If I'd been better. Even just a little bit."

Sham didn't say anything. Not for a long time, not even after Sam had talked himself out, left his throat raw and his chest achingly empty. When they came to a stretch of road with a shoulder big enough to pull off onto, Sham parked, then climbed out and grabbed the duffel bag out of the back.

Sam got out too, and then they were staring at each other over the glossy black roof of the Impala, morning dew that had gathered during the drive winking at them. Sham was the first one to talk.

"I'm not the ideal." He shook his head. "There is no ideal. Unless we sat down and plotted out every second of our lives after twenty-two and...tallied it all up, we're never gonna know who did more damage or more good. Maybe it's me, maybe it's you, and besides. Isn't that all kinda, I don't know, subjective anyway?"

"Saving the world's not subjective," Sam replied dryly. Sham half-smiled.

"You wouldn't believe some of the things I've done, some of the things I've let loose, to save Dean and only Dean."

"I didn't even do that," Sam said back, a little weakly. "I threw my Dean out of my life."

With that mention, it felt like he was standing over a jigsaw puzzle, all of a sudden. One he'd been putting together for years, unable to stop himself as pieces were unearthed in his brain and his world. He'd kept them flipped over, afraid of what the picture on the other side would turn out to be, even though part of him suspected he already knew. Last night, he'd finally forced himself to look at it right side up. Confirm all his suspicions.

"It wasn't his fault, Jess dying," Sam admitted, every word dragging blood grooves along his tongue. "It was mine."

"No," Sham corrected. "It was Azazel's."

They left the car behind, walked out onto the plains until they came to an area where the groundcover was sparse enough to set up. Sham unzipped the duffel, and then it was all crystals and bowls and spray-painted sigils on the hard-packed dirt, Sam following silent directions and the scribbled notes that Sham handed over to him. It was probably about half an hour later, sun coming up over the horizon in a blue blaze, that Sham spoke again.

"I still wanna tell you I'm sorry." When Sam looked over at him, Sham's eyes were on his hands as he very carefully arranged a little pyre of sage bundles. "I shouldn't have called you a monster."

"I called you one first."

"Doesn't make it better." Sham shook his head. His hair fell past his ears, mostly hid his face. "It scared me. Finding out about the decision you made after that first hunt, with the Woman in White."

Sam frowned. "It...scared you? Why?"

"'Cause I almost made it, too." Sham finally looked at him. "I thought about it. Staying behind, going to law school. I was mad at everyone that morning, everything, and I'd already spent six or seven years being at least a little mad at Dean. It would've been so easy to skew a little harder towards him than me and the demon."

"So why didn't you?"

There was a pause, and they were staring at each other again.

"I don't know," Sham answered.

They got back to work. Sam smirked to himself for a few minutes, bitter and bleak.

"You were afraid 'cause you found out you could've been me," he said eventually.

"No. That's not it." Sham stopped. "I've spent so much of my life fighting hard as I can against my...so-called 'destiny.' I've clawed for every decision I've gotten to make, every act of free will. But somehow, it's still terrifying to find out that I could've been something other than what I am right now."

Sam was surprised at how true that rang for him, too.

He hadn't expected any more conversation. Not for a while, at least. So it startled him when Sham very tentatively broke the silence.

"Can I ask about your…" He nodded to Sam's right hand. "Wife?"

Sam looked down at the ring, plain gray silicone, and felt his face tighten a little.

"Not a wife."

It took Sham about half a second to puzzle that out, then there was an awkward, "Oh."

"Are you not - ?" Sam glanced at him.

"No. No, I am. Just mostly, y'know…" Sham trailed off. "Girls."

"Yeah." Sam focused on the can of spray paint in his hand. "Me, too."

"Would it be...I mean, is it," Sham began cautiously, "anybody I know?"

Sam straightened up, blew a massive sigh out his nose. "Tyson Brady."

"Shit, no." Sham was immediately in full alarm mode. "Okay, you gotta - "

"I know he's possessed." Sam cut him off, closing his eyes. "Or was, at least. It was feeding me demon blood. It was the one that'd killed Jess, too. I found out, I exorcised it...Brady was dead by then."

When he opened his eyes, Sham was standing there and looking at him. Sam searched his face, expecting pity or maybe even disgust, at how weak he'd been. All he found was empathy, and a complex breed of grief.

"The ring's a reminder." Sam held up his hand. "Of what happens when I…"

"Let people in?" Sham guessed softly. Sam looked away. After a beat, Sham said, "I'm sorry. I know how you feel."

"Thanks." Sam licked his lips, looked back at Sham. "You...got anybody?"

Sham smiled. Sam wasn't sure that it was the kind of expression he'd ever seen or even felt on his own face before.

"I'm not alone," Sham replied, hand straying, oddly enough, to his shirt pocket.

Sam nodded once. "Good. That's good."

By the time the spell circle was finished, the sun was fully up. It rose fast out here. Sham retrieved the thermos from the car, and they stood back from their handiwork, sharing it back and forth.

"So all we gotta do now is light a couple fires, bleed a little, say the incantation I threw together and pray that it doesn't all blow up in our faces," Sham announced once they were both sufficiently caffeinated.

"Great," Sam deadpanned.

They both stood there, examining what Sam had to admit was a really incredible feat of magical engineering. Massively complex, twenty feet wide, symbolism from fifteen different cultures he could count and probably a dozen more he couldn't painted onto and scratched into the dirt. Well over a hundred ingredients in the bowls placed inside smaller circles. Two dozen kinds of gemstone, each one intended to channel or attract a different kind of energy they'd need for this. Insanely complex, a Frankenstein's monster of alchemy and witchcraft. Sam almost wanted to take a picture and see if he couldn't -

"You don't have to go back," Sham said suddenly.

Sam glanced at him, not sure he'd heard him right. "What?"

"You can stay here." Sham was talking fast. "With us. You can hunt, if you and me wind up working cases together we can just tell people we're twins, that might actually come in handy. You can keep your room at the bunker." He met Sam's eyes, then gestured to the mutant spell circle. "You don't have to risk...this."

Sam opened his mouth. Then he closed it. And then he thought about it, what Sham was offering him. Really, honestly thought about it. And it was more tempting than he ever would have expected it to be a week ago, or even a day ago.

He could feel it, the "yes" crawling up the back of his throat. But then he thought about Dean. Telling him he'd died for this Sam, killed for him, would do it again. The answer vanished, and a new one took its place.

"No," Sam told Sham. "That...it'd just be another kind of running away. And I think I'm finally sick of that." He took a deep breath. "I need to go home. I need to try and figure out how to fix as much as I can of what's left. I want to. And I think I know where to start."

Sham nodded, in a way that made Sam think that was exactly what he expected to hear. "Good luck."

"If I'm the same person as you…" Sam smiled a little. "I won't need it."

Sham snorted. "If you're the same person as me, you're gonna need as much as you can get."

Then he hugged him. It was like Sam had just brushed up against the world's biggest supply of static electricity, the contact. He stood frozen for a second, and he realized he didn't know what to do. Because the last person to touch him, to really touch him, to hug him...it had been Brady. Sam swallowed, let his eyes fall closed. He hugged Sham back. He smelled like him.

They walked carefully through the circle, lighting the contents of all of the bowls. They stood over the one in the center, cut down the middles of their palms with clean knives, bled into the flames. For Sham, it just meant unzipping a scar Sam could tell had been opened dozens of times before.

"You ready?" Sham asked him, hand still dripping.

Sam nodded. Sham closed his eyes, began to speak, apparently from memory.

He didn't even reach the end before everything went violently black.

It was late afternoon when Sam drifted vaguely back into consciousness. He could tell that just by looking up at the ceiling above him, washed in light inching towards a honey-gold. It was familiar, what he could see. Even if he didn't spend a whole lot of time looking up here.

He was back in his apartment. He was home.

He pushed himself stiffly up onto his elbows, head pounding and back aching. He was on the floor in the middle of his living room, couch and coffee table and TV. He tried to get up, but a wave of vertigo knocked him back onto his ass, and he had to sit there with his head between his knees until it passed. Apparently interdimensional travel was just as hard on the return trip, and he could only hope it wasn't doing any permanent damage to him.

Sam finally managed to get up, staggered into the kitchen for a glass of water. He managed to spill a decent amount of it down his front, still clumsy and disoriented, and when he glanced down, he realized he was still wearing Sham's clothes. Buttoned flannel and loose jeans. His own stuff was still back over there, in the room he'd left behind.

That sucked, he thought distantly to himself. The jacket especially had been expensive. But he didn't care all that much right now.

He did a circuit of the apartment very first, making sure his wards were still up and everything was in working order as his body slowly remembered it had fine motor skills. It was all exactly as he'd left it, with the exception of the pile of mail in front of his door. Looked like time did pass the same over here as it did back there, which meant there had to be a dozen different messes for him to sort out.

Sam gathered up the envelopes, laid them neatly out on the kitchen table in a few separate piles. Junk mail, bills, work. He stood with his hands on the back of a chair for several long minutes, just staring down at them as shadows lengthened around him and the light thickened. Then he left them, heading to his room and sinking down onto his bed.

He needed a second, Sam told himself. He'd deal with it in a minute, but for now, he just needed a second.

He had no idea how long that "second" actually wound up being. All he knew was that night had fallen completely by the time he suddenly twisted his ring off his finger and hurled it into the wastebasket on the other side of the room.

He hadn't even been thinking about it. Just hadn't been able to stand the feel of the rubber against his skin, out of the blue.

Maybe that had been the case for a while now.

Sam pushed himself up, crossing to his dresser. Kneeling, he pulled open the lowest drawer, pawed past all the neatly-folded cold-weather stuff he used maybe six days out of the year, until he found a faded scrap of paper half-wedged into the seam between two pieces of wood. He'd had it for over a decade, brought it along on multiple moves. Held it above a trash can and an open flame at least a dozen times each but never gone through with it. The messy ink scrawl had gone soft and faded with how often he'd looked at it, touched it.

He found his cell phone, dead. Used the landline to dial the number on the paper. It rang half a dozen times before there was a brusque, "You know what to do."

Sam took a deep breath before the tone sounded.

"Hi, Dean," he said softly into the receiver, and squeezed his eyes shut, praying. "I know it's been a while, and...you probably don't wanna hear from me. I get that."

He sat there, in the sturdy borrowed hunting clothes he'd never give back, rubbing almost absentmindedly at the newly-bare skin on his left hand.

"But I need you to call me back. We...we got a lot to talk about."


End file.
